Topic: the laptop actually caught fire tonight.

[fuzzybutt]

well some of you may have been following the thread about how bad dell is. my laptop (inspiron 1150) that i've havd overheating problems with since it was new (august 5th 2004) finally caught fire tonight. right before it shut itself down it started smoking heavily. i took the back off and there is a blackened melted mess where the processor plugs into the board. thank goodness i paid the extra money for a 5 year inhome warranty. last night , before it burned, i was told i would be getting a new/refurbed updated machine, NOT an inspiron 1150. so for the next week or so i'll be using a borrowed desktop to come in here on.

[kirkn]

OUCH!  that's a real bummer.

I haven't followed any other thread, but my son got the same computer for Christmas in '06 (Dell Inspiron 1150), and it has worked flawlessly the whole time (except for software glitches he brought on himself trying to make it a more hot-rod gaming computer).

Sorry to hear about it, though.  Good luck with it.

Kirk

[mystic_1]

Impressive.


mystic_1

[Sam Green Racing]

Hey Fuzzy, dose anything ever go right for you ?  

Sam.

[super pasty white guy]

well, at least the problem is resolved and a new machine is on the way.

spwg

[fuzzybutt]

Hey Fuzzy, dose anything ever go right for you ?  

Sam.

not lately Sam, thats for damn sure 

[eldar]

There was a spree of bad batteries a couple years ago. That is what they did. They caught on fire.

[Really?]

Yea, there was a recall from Dell.

[heffay]

yay, new computer... things are lookin' up !

i'm sorry your new computer will still be a dell.   

[mark]

There was a spree of bad batteries a couple years ago. That is what they did. They caught on fire.

2 or 3 recalls from Toshiba and mine still isn't on the list. I keep a bucket of sand handy.

 

[Really?]

If the flames were not bad enough, you can check your battery to see if it was recalled here - http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/

[Artfrombama]

Too many porn downloads

J/K

[eldar]

Was not just dell. Gateway did it, apple too as well as others.

[333]

You don't do anything half way, do you?

I would ask about any data on the burned machine.  Are they going to take yours and get the data?  If not, then ask them for the hard disc.  There are housings that you slip the hard disc into that hook up to a USB port and you can get your data and/or other files off of it.  You can then format it and use it for data storage that you can take to any other computer.  They can be had for less than $30.00.  They come in 2 basic sizes, 2.5" for the laptop size, and 3.5" for the desktop size.  Best money I ever spent.  I snag the hard disc from every dead computer I come across, and have more than enough file storage space than I'll ever need.  And redundancy.

[seaweb11]

Hopefully your cat wasn't snuggling in behind the warm mother board

[78 k550]

yay, new computer... things are lookin' up !

i'm sorry your new computer will still be a dell.   

  Can you say Vista   

Paul

[fuzzybutt]

i put the hard drive into an external enclosure and hooked it to the wifes machine, it seems to be ok. the new laptop will have vista but the first thing i'm going to do is "downgrade" it to xp pro. this wasnt one of the ones with the recalled battery, it was the processor that fried. it wasnt a major conflaguration or anything, just enough to melt some plastic and part of the keyboard

[eldar]

Why change it to xp? I installed vista home premium on a 3 year old hp laptop. It has yet to have a problem.It does not start as fast or shutdown as fast but then I put it into sleep and it only takes a few seconds to start back up. I have some people in my office here(we do computer support for a private college) and they will not go back to xp as it offers no real advantage over vista. Vista got a bad rap as when it first came out, people tried to put it on computers that really could not support it. What you need to do is get rid of the install that dell does. Format the thing and reinstall vista from scratch.
THEN you put on what you want and not all the extra crap the pc vendors throw on.

I have a toshiba that is a little over a year old. it has ONE gig of ram, it runs vista fine. Funny how some many people talk bad about vista when it works good. It IS just as stable now as xp is. With a proper pc, it is virtually as fast in operation. It IS most resistant to viruses AND is much more secure than xp ever was.

What is also funny is that these same issues happened with xp when it first came out but how quickly people forget.

Get the disk with the pc. Format it and reinstall vista(another area which is MUCH better than xp, raid drivers anyone?),
install what you want and I bet it will work just fine. I will say to make sure you install service pack 1. It helps a lot, unlike service pack 2 and 3 for xp which broke things at first.

As an aside, I run 10 year old software just fine on vista. The video card in my hp laptop has no vista drivers from intel, yet vista supports it great. Vista is light years ahead of xp in terms of driver support now. When it first came out, that may not have been the case but it is true now.

[mark]

Was not just dell. Gateway did it, apple too as well as others.

..... a bad run of batteries from good ol' SONY!

What is also funny is that these same issues happened with xp when it first came out but how quickly people forget.

Win95 was pretty stable when I got that machine but it didn't get 98 on it until well after 98SE came out and got a mess of updates.....

 

[fuzzybutt]

well, the newcomouter arrived already! until i find one of my applications that wont run with vista, i'll keep vista on this machine. this is one HOT ROD of a laptop compared to what it's replacing. 4 gigs of ram, rather than a max of 1 gig on the old one, dual core processor, built in wireless. this is a sweet little machine..............so far.

[mark]

ya gotta love new toys.

 

[fuzzybutt]

yeah, new toys are great

[eldar]

Like I said, blow it away and reinstall. BEST way to do it on any computer. That way you can get rid of the extra crap the computer vendor loads on it. You do not have to of course!

[mystic_1]

So, what are the temps like in the new laptop?

mystic_1

[fuzzybutt]

it runs really cool, hard drive temp hasnt gone past 80 and the cpu is at 98. bit cooler compared to 110 for the hard drive and 160-170 for the cpu on the inspiron 1150